Mona Seghatoleslami

Afternoon host

Mona Seghatoleslami

Mona Seghatoleslami﻿ is the host and producer on WXXI Classical 91.5 FM weekdays from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. She also hosts the lunchtime concert series Live From Hochstein Wednesdays at 12:10 p.m., interviews musicians, produces special programs, and works on any project she can find that helps connect people and music in our community through WXXI.

Mona is originally from New Jersey; she ventured out to the Midwest for college, where studied viola at Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. She got her start in radio at WFIU in Bloomington, Indiana while in grad school studying musicology and library science at Indiana University. She also spent a few years as a radio announcer and producer in West (by God) Virginia, where she also wrote for the Charleston Gazette and taught American music at West Virginia State University.

When she’s not on the radio, you can find Mona attending concerts and movies, playing viola in community orchestras, occasionally strumming the ukulele, riding her bike everywhere, and reading as much as she can – especially The New Yorker and sci-fi novels. She also books the bands for one of the coolest live music venues in Rochester – The Little Theatre Café.

Join WXXI for Classical 91.5 Presents, a series that spotlights classical music connections in film.

Classical 91.5 Presents...The Competition, a movie where competitors in a classical piano competition (played by Richard Dreyfuss and Lee Remick) fall in love, Saturday September 28th at The Little Theatre. Show up early to enjoy live music with the Empire Film and Media Ensemble in The Little Café starting at 2pm, the movie screens at 3pm, with a discussion afterwards.

Join WXXI for Classical 91.5 Presents, a series that spotlights classical music connections in film.

Classical 91.5 Presents...E.T. (The Extra-Terrestrial) with its great score by John Williams, on Saturday November 16th at The Little Theatre. Enjoy live music with the Empire Film and Media Ensemble in the Little Café at 2pm and the movie starts at 3pm, with a discussion hosted by WXXI's Brenda Tremblay afterwards.

Witches, ghosts, and devils - these traditional fixtures of the halloween season are no strangers to the operatic stage. You can find witches advising Macbeth in Verdi's opera and ghosts of opera characters of old reanacting their tales in John Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles, as well as plenty of devils in Gounod's Faust, Boito's Mefistofele, and others.

A few operas really stand out to me as being particularly creepy, beyond the apperance of a touch of the supernatural.

The annual David Hochstein Recital Competition recognizes outstanding musicianship and performance skills of advanced student musicians in grades 10-12 who reside in the nine-county region surrounding Greater Rochester. The students who win this competition perform at a recital at Hochstein each spring.

Our annual celebration of the holiday season with the choral chamber ensemble Madrigalia, led by music director Cary Ratcliff. Find some peace and inspiration in music over lunch on December 5th (12:10-12:50pm).

You're invited to come out to hear the music in person at the Hochstein Performance Hall (50 N. Plymouth Avenue, downtown Rochester) or listen to it broadcast live on WXXI Classical 91.5.

Johannes Brahms was heartbroken as he wrote his second sextet for strings - coding the name of his beloved in the pensive, romantic music. Lose yourself in this musical world over lunch on November 14th (12:10-12:50pm) with some wonderful musicians: violinists Molly McDonald and Eri Noda, violists Olita Strazds Povero and Aika Ito, and cellists Cora Swenson Lee and Jennifer Carpenter.